Ashley Parker

So if you like what they're doing, which is sort of the destruction of the administrative state, they are much better

staffers in that mission.

And that loyalty has become easier in certain ways.

You know, Ezra, you mentioned Marco Rubio, right?

Someone who seemed very unlikely to serve in a Trump administration.

But the world changed between his first and second terms in the sense that in the first term, not just the people around him and Republicans and voters and world leaders, but from everyone, there was a sense that this was an aberration and it was a fever dream.

Even Joe Biden ran on returning to normalcy, right?

And when Trump retakes power, when he comes back to the White House, and doesn't just come back, but he comes back after January 6th, there is a sense that Trump was not the aberration.

Perhaps Joe Biden was the aberration.

And this is where the country is.

This is where the Republican Party is.

And if you're someone like Marco Rubio,

who wants to be a player in what is essentially the modern Republican Party, it instills, I think, a level of loyalty and a level of fealty.

And those people who didn't like it, the Paul Ryans, the Mitt Romneys of the world, they left.

And to Michael's point, I hadn't quite thought of it that way, but I think you're exactly right that a lot of these women who are in very senior, powerful positions have been able to say things to Trump in a way he wouldn't accept from other people.

And I think it's their ability, frankly, to not dissimilarize.

to being a parent, right?

You have different kids.

And if I'm messaging something to my seven-year-old and I want her to do something or hear me, I do it differently than I do to my 14-year-old or my two-and-a-half-year-old, right?

I'm not gonna say what age I'm arguing the president is, but all of those women sort of understood Trump, understood what he needed, understood how to present him information.